Somebody Else
by Ms Starlight
Summary: Zack's new life isn't going so well introspective piece


Rating: G

Disclaimer: Dark Angel and Lifehouse both do not belong to me.

A/N: I started this fic a long time ago, but I never got the inspiration to finish it until now. Got all four of my wisdom teeth yanked Friday; so, I actually had some time to sit down and write!

Somebody Else

The light from the full moon filtered down through a downy sky. The land looked almost surreal, cast with an eerie silver sheen. There was a heavy, laden feel to the air despite the light chill of the coming fall. Unable to sleep, Adam stood barefoot on the porch, listening to the light creak of the wooden slats under his substantial weight.

Adam -- he threw the name around in his mind. It still sounded foreign. Whoever Adam was, was _supposed_ to be, he still wasn't sure.

He didn't remember the accident, had virtually no life before it that he recalled. The stories came through to him second hand, but even they were sometimes inconsistent. His history was apparently full of anomalies...being in two places at once, or reacting two different ways in the same situation. Of course, he couldn't lay too much weight behind the errors in stories people told him. The human mind was, at best, a fallible type of machine.

Still, as he stood under the heavy summer moon and waited for some essence of physical exhaustion to creep into his body, he couldn't help but feel lost. He worked from sun up to sun down, often times sleeping very little during the night. At first, dull pain had kept him awake. He'd lay in bed, the crisp sheets pulled up to his chin, and try not to focus on the humming along the nerves of his torso. He'd healed quickly, but sleep continued to elude him.

Can't change this feeling  
I'm way out of touch

Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his dark, denim jeans he eased his way down the creaky porch steps. The season had been unusually dry, and the grass crunched painfully under his feet. There'd be no morning dew to ease the tender green shoots, and the purple alfalfa in the irrigated hay fields was the only source of color spilling across the moonlit horizon.

He was more fond of trees and running water than the never ending plains. In a strange sort of way, they made him feel more at ease. There was a stark openness to flat land that made him uneasy. A touch of dank darkness, laced ever so slightly with the scent of pine and mud, was the image that offered him the most comfort. He could hide in that sort of environment, tuck behind the foliage and loose himself in the shadows.

He wondered if some of the more strange sensations to cross his mind didn't have a connection to his dreams. They were never anything more than hazy and disconnected images, but they haunted him. Especially the ones of a dark, beautiful woman. He didn't know her name, didn't even know the exact features of her face, but he certainly knew exactly how she made him feel.

Can't change this meaning  
It means too much

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. In terms of women, things hadn't been all so bad in his life. His family hadn't mentioned any specific romantic affairs from before the accident, but he'd become close to a number of women since. None of them were girls he'd become particularly attached to, and few of them amounted to much more than a needed companion.

He ran his fingers across the wooden fence, watching them drop into the grooves in the wood, and thought of Erin. She was a petite women, dark haired with luminescent blue eyes. He'd met her on a hasty trip into town. She was walking up the sidewalk as he got out of the old, dusty farm truck, a hat titled down over his eyes to ward off the July sun. What he remembered most about those first impressionable moments of their relationship was her laugh. She had the most delightful, genuine laugh he had ever heard. 

There were parts of Erin that he could see in the woman in his dreams. They had the same dark hair, the same beautiful smile. Only, Erin was fragile. She was a butterfly thrown into a tempest, and she needed a person well-within himself enough to treat her as the elegant creature she was.

So, Adam was what amounted to a free man.

Never been this lonely  
Never felt so good

He wasn't very sentimental. When it came to romance, he preferred to be left out. Yet, there remained the constant enigma of the woman in his dreams. He was convinced that she was real, even if no one in his family had mentioned her to him. She was too real to discount.

There were, Adam figured, enough oddities in his life without throwing a mystery woman into the mix. He smelled things other people didn't, saw things most people missed, and could lift things bigger men could hardly budge. It wasn't extraordinarily difficult for him to realize that he was different. Whether he was just exceptionally healthy or secretly Superman, he was still different. Nobody else ever brought it up, but he could see the knowledge reflected back in their eyes.

Even within his family, the very people who were his flesh and blood, he didn't quite feel like he belonged.

I can't be the only one misunderstood

He paused and for a moment and basked in the emptiness of the night. His blonde hair was plastered to the back of his neck with a sheen of sweat, and the air tingled and grasped at the beads of moisture, sending a shiver up his spine. 

_I remind myself of somebody else_

Adam felt like he was trapped in a life that wasn't his own. That was to be expected, he supposed, after loosing all of his memory in the accident. Bits and pieces of memories and ideas came back to him from time to time in dreams, but as he presently existed he was working to forge himself an identity. He could loose anyone in his life, and it scared him less than the tremors that chased through his blood as he lay in bed, realizing that he had completely lost himself. 

There was so much he didn't know, things he wished he remembered. He couldn't remember his first childhood kiss, his friends, school, or playing out in the fields. There was waking up in the hospital, looking up into a set of strange eyes framed by an even stranger face. The man who would bring him home, reintroduce him to the rituals of daily life. 

Adam sighed and gripped the fence hard, a sliver of wood driving into the palm of his hand. Cussing forcefully, he jumped back from it, waving his hand. He had what was considered a high tolerance for pain, but on this particular night the fence's infraction was the last straw. Swinging out with his injured hand, he gave the thick post a wicked backhand. The muscles of his forearm cried out from the battery, but not as loudly as the moaning crack of the hapless fencepost.

Chagrined, he stared at the jagged break, made deeper and more horrific by the shadowy moonlight. He raked his good hand through his hair, wondering not for the first time what was wrong with him.

_ Feeling like I'm chasing  
Like I'm facing myself alone_

He pulled the sliver from his hand, noticing that it hadn't descended far into his flesh. Yet another oddity within his bizarre life. He had the temper of a rabid dog, and quite often he did things that should have earned him a hospital visit. Since the accident, he hadn't gone to the doctor a single time, not even for a routine check-up. Adam wasn't overly fond of doctors, but his exceptional health was strange. 

The fence post would be fixed the next day. Adam had broken a slew of them in the past few months, and he was becoming an expert at replacing them. 

Hunching his shoulders, he moved on down the fence line. In front of him the grass lurched up suddenly in a hill and dropped off on the other side. An old, dry creek bed sliced through their property, and Adam stood at the top of the rise imagining the old waters rushing by his feet. The grass would have been tender and the rocky dirt soft, and the cool creek water would have cooled his heated skin. 

As it was, however, the only remaining evidence of any pleasant water was the carved out etch in the land and the rocky remembrance of aquatic life in tightly curled, calcified shells. 

Adam wanted to get away...desperately. He was restless, always looking over his shoulder, always seeing something lurking in the shadows. He felt like he needed to move to another place, and in his own mind it seemed as if getting away from the open prairie to somewhere easier to hide was a matter of life or death. 

_I've got somebody else's thoughts in my head  
I want some of my own_

He shook his head hard, feeling tormented. There were thoughts floating through his mind that seemed to come out of nowhere. There was paranoia, a steely sort of fear and responsibility. He often got the aching feeling that he'd forgotten something, left something very important behind. That incompleteness filled him, haunted him, drove all semblance of sleep from his life. 

He was going crazy.

His mind reeled, and he had to put out an arm to steady himself as his entire body swayed. Like a broken record, his thoughts went back to the woman of his dreams. Those wonderful, beautiful dreams were the only moments (wake or asleep) that he honestly felt at ease. 

_Can you see me up here?  
Would you bring me back down?_

There was water in his dreams, and it was dark. The air was salty, somewhat sweet, and her body was warm against him as she brought him forward into an embrace. His thundering heartbeat slowed as the image of her surrounded him once more: soft...fragrant...feminine.

She was everything that he wanted out of life. She was so real, almost tangible enough to touch, and he ached to wake one morning to find she was more than a figment of his imagination. It was a silly thing to hold onto, a dream. But, that dream alone brought him through his days and nights. She was the one with him through the accident, through the long hours following. She was his angel, always tingling at the front of his mind. 

Adam swallowed, his throat dry.

He had to get out.

_Cause I've been living to see my fears  
As they fall to the ground_

He started back toward the house at a quick pace. Weeds dug into the bottoms of his feet, but that was the last thing on his mind. He felt like a caged animal with nowhere to go. All he really knew was that the longer he stayed where he was, the more tortured he would become. He had to start moving, find whatever it was he was looking for. Maybe he'd find the girl...hopefully he'd find himself. 

_I remind myself of somebody else_

The porch creaked unhappily under him, and the dog peeked out from the darkness underneath. Light reflected in the back of his old eyes, shining an eerie orange in the darkness. Adam had to shrug off the unhappy feeling that the dog would attack him, working hard to convince himself there wasn't anything hiding behind the door or in the shadows

Quietly, he walked down the long hallway toward his room, focusing on the constant tick of the old clock in the living room. He timed his breathing with the incessant tick-tock -- in, out, in, out.

His room was sparse, and it smelled strongly of sweat and pain. The air was suffocating. 

He lowed himself onto his bed, pulling on a pair of white, fluffy socks. They had little red seams running across his toes, and he sat back for a moment to look at them. White socks were such a...homey thing. He was going to walk away from everything, from his life and family, for what? A dream? A phantom? A deep frown set into his face. He would, and he was going to. It bothered him to find how easy it was to throw everything away. Even in a house packed with people (he could hear a gentle snoring coming from the next room) he felt alone. 

Shrugging, he slipped on some shoes, having no idea where he intended to go or how he was going to get there. All he knew was that he had to find some answers, about himself and about his deep unease. His muscles quivered deep beneath his skin, sending a cold rush through his bones and blood. 

_Feeling like I'm chasing  
Like I'm facing myself alone_

Pushing himself off of the bed, he pulled on a blue jacket and grabbed a faded, gray duffel bag from the open closet. It had some odd items inside from the last time he'd cleaned out his drawers. Odd fitting jeans and some socks who'd somehow lost their partners fell out onto the floor as he turned it upside down. In their place he shoved in a few pairs of jeans, one with a wad of odd increment bills stuffed in the front pocket. A few shirts, a pile of white socks with the red seams, and some toiletries went on top of the pants. 

He wasn't even sure he could accomplish what he was setting out to do. As far as he knew, he'd never lived on his own, and the world was a rough place to try and get by in without an edge.

Closing his eyes, he tightened one hand into a fist, taking note of the strength of his grip. If Adam had any high points, his sheer strength was it. Adding onto that his quick reflexes and singular determination, he knew he would be able to make it in the world. He'd force a niche, carve it with his bare hands, hollowing out a place in society until somehow he fit. 

_I've got somebody else's thoughts in my head  
I want some of my own_

Tossing the duffel bag over one arm, he made his way back down the hall, pausing momentarily in front of the last closed door. He could hear her breathing just beyond the door, curled up in her bed with the window hanging open as the crickets sang outside in the shrubs. His sister, he would miss her the most. She could always look at him, chiseled and stony, and see someone who laughed and loved. She saw strait past the Adam mask to the man beneath, the strange person he sometimes saw in the mirror in the morning, ticking somewhere at the back of his mind. 

_Am I hiding behind my doubts?  
Are they hiding behind me?_

She could wait, he would come back to find her someday. The world was waiting for him. The phantom that had been haunting for him restlessly turned in his head, driving him forward into the night. There was something -- someone -- out there that he had to find. 

The darkness welcomed him like an old friend, and he pushed his hair out of his eyes and listened to the sound of the grass crunching under his shoes. He felt like he was running, and it all seemed very familiar. Oddly, falling back into the feeling of flight was...comforting. The sound of his footsteps, they rhythm of his heartbeat, and the crackle of the night all rushed about him, filling with nebulous imagery of snow and children. 

_Her_, he would find her, and he would find himself. Compelled, he fled into the night from home and family into uncertainty. 

_Closer to finding out  
It doesn't mean anything..._


End file.
